Chương 4
Adrian looked at his mother. “When was that?”
“Last month. Rosa had washed the containers and switched the lids.”
“No,” Ivy said. “Celeste switched them.”
“Ivy,” Adrian said carefully, “did you see her do that?”
“No.”
“Then we can’t say she did.”
Ivy considered this. “But she laughed.”
“Who laughed?”
“Celeste. When Grandma tasted it.”
Eleanor pressed her fingertips to her mouth.
Adrian remembered the incident. Celeste had told him Eleanor confused salt and sugar. She had presented it gently, almost reluctantly, after Eleanor went home. Adrian had added it to the quiet accumulation of worries he kept in the back of his mind.
The handbag in the refrigerator.
The repeated question about Thomas.
The missed appointment with her dentist.
The stove left burning in her town house.
Claire’s name used in place of Ivy’s.
None of those events had come from a yellow book. They had come from Celeste, one at a time, in moments when Adrian was tired enough to accept concern as fact.
“Where is the book?” he asked.
Ivy lowered her voice. “In Celeste’s room.”
Celeste did not officially have a room in the mansion. She spent three or four nights a week there, and clothing had gradually filled the guest suite adjoining Adrian’s bedroom. Rosa still called it the east guest room. Celeste called it ours when speaking to Adrian and mine when giving instructions to staff.
“Have you been in there?” he asked.
Ivy shook her head. “The door was open. It was on the bed.”
“What did you read?”
“The date. And Grandma’s name. And ‘salt tea.’”
“You’re not in trouble.”
“I know.”
The answer came too quickly.
Adrian looked at her. “You are not in trouble.”
Ivy folded the card along the wrong crease. “Celeste says listening is spying.”
Eleanor turned back from the windows.
“When did she say that?”
“When I heard her talking about putting Grandma somewhere.”
Adrian felt the room narrow around him.
“Who was she speaking to?”
“A lady on her phone.”
“What did she say?”
Ivy’s eyes moved toward Rosa, who had returned without anyone noticing and now stood near the door.
Rosa’s face had lost color.
“Ivy,” Rosa said, “tell your father only what you heard.”
“She said Grandma would be easier after the evaluation.”
Adrian stood.
The movement startled Ivy. She flinched, not dramatically, but enough.
He stopped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not angry with you.”
“You look angry.”
“I am. Not with you.”
Eleanor watched him with an expression he could not read.
Celeste was still in the dining room when Adrian returned.
She had sat down again. Her wine remained untouched. One of the catering staff had removed the food but left the plates, perhaps uncertain whether clearing them would sound too much like judgment.
Celeste looked up as Adrian entered.
“Is your mother all right?”
He closed the door behind him.
“Where is the yellow notebook?”
Her eyes shifted before she could prevent it.
“What notebook?”
“The one with the bee on it.”
She leaned back slowly.
“Ivy has been in my room.”
“That is not the question.”
“It should concern you.”
“Where is it?”
Celeste stared at him.
Adrian did not raise his voice. His anger rarely made him louder. It made him precise.
“You changed the cards. You seated my mother in the wrong place. You waited for her to trust the card, then described her as confused. My daughter says you have been recording incidents in a notebook. I am asking you where it is.”
“I have been keeping notes because no one else will.”
“Where?”
“In my bag.”
The bag rested on the sideboard behind her.
Adrian looked at it but did not move.
“Take it out.”
Celeste’s face hardened. “You don’t order me to empty my belongings.”
“No. I ask you to show me the notes you made about my mother while arranging a medical assessment without her knowledge.”
“You arranged it too.”
“I agreed to it based partly on what you told me.”
“Everything I told you happened.”
“Did tonight happen the way you intended to write it?”
The question landed.
Celeste looked down at the tablecloth.
Adrian waited.
She drew the yellow notebook from her bag and placed it on the table.
A small embossed bee decorated the cover.
He did not open it immediately.
“Why did you switch the cards?”
“I told you.”
“You said Ivy would be calmer beside you.”
“She would have been.”
“She avoids you.”
Celeste flinched.
It was the first unguarded reaction he had seen from her.
“Because Rosa encourages it,” she said.
“Rosa barely speaks about you.”
“Exactly. She makes silence feel like a verdict.”
“This is not about Rosa.”
“It is about this house. Everyone in it had a place before I arrived. Your mother walks in without calling. Rosa makes decisions you don’t know she makes. Ivy decides which rooms are sacred because Claire used them. I move a chair and suddenly I’m on trial.”
“You didn’t move a chair. You created evidence.”
“I created a moment in which your mother’s dependence was visible.”
Adrian stared at her.
Celeste’s jaw tightened. She seemed to hear her own sentence only after it was spoken.
“That is not what I meant.”
“It sounded clear.”
“She relies on labels. On routines. When those routines change, she becomes disoriented.”
“You changed the label.”
“To see whether she would notice.”
“You tested her.”
“I tested what everyone keeps refusing to test.”
“At dinner.”
“Before a medical appointment you would have canceled if she objected.”
“I should cancel it.”
“You should attend it.”
“She should decide.”
“She will say no.”
“Then the answer is no.”
Celeste stood again. This time the movement held less elegance. Her knee struck the underside of the table, and a water glass trembled.
“You watched your father decline for two years because she refused to admit he was sick,” she said. “You told me that yourself.”
May you like
Adrian’s mouth went dry.
Thomas Vale had developed vascular dementia after a series of small strokes. Eleanor had hidden the first incidents from the family: unpaid bills, unexplained drives, a kitchen fire extinguished before anyone arrived. By the time Adrian understood the extent of it, Thomas had wandered out of the town house during a January storm.
